The Bristol Magazine Contents Page Analysis

Sussex Style Contents Page Analysis

My Chosen Double Page Spread Article

The brief requires me to create the first four pages of a regional magazine.  My magazine will include the front cover and a contents page, meaning I only need to produce one out of the two double pages I have planned for. I have chosen to include the soup kitchen article in the magazine and not The Clothes Show article.

This is because it's not about a mainstream topic and is for local cause that needs more recognition.  Also because the soup kitchen is an on going event people can join the cause when it's most convenient to them, which I will advertise on the right page.  Furthermore, the Clothes Show story was primarily targeted at teenage females, whereas this story will appeal to all ages due to the charitable nature.

Layout for the Soup Kitchen Double Page Spread

Interview for the Soup Kitchen Article

To improve the legitimacy of the article and allow readers to engage from different perspectives, I interviewed the woman in charge of the soup kitchen about her reason for joining and taking part. This article would be to fall the demand for a cooking article from the audience research questionnaire.  As I am a teenager hopefully this article from my point of view will appeal to younger consumers and encourage them to help their local soup kitchen and better the community. Also due to the maturity of the content and charity work being a broad topic of interest this will too encourage my older demographic to get involved.   

Visiting the Soup Kitchen

The second idea for the double page spread was an article about a christmas special at the local soup kitchen organised by a church. My plan initially is for my magazine to have a winter seasonal theme and this story would be a perfect fit.

With this article, I visited the soup kitchen and took part in serving the less fortunate people who attended.  After expressing to the workers and the attendees about doing a magazine article about the soup kitchen they allowed me to take pictures to establish the setting and these images will contribute to the magazine.

In Wolverhampton West Magazine, Wolverhampton Magazine and Time Out London magazine their double page spreads featured; on the left page a main article and on the right page a full paged advertisement and I think this would be the best format for this article.

Example from Wolverhampton West Magazine:

Emailing Wolverhampton Magazine and Finding a Production Tutorial

To find out more about the production process of  magazine and advice as to how I should produce the magazine we called and emailed the editors of Wolverhampton Magazine for professional advice.

Theses were the following questions:

Question 1:

How do you find out information for your stories?

Question 2:

How long does it take for a magazine to be produced?

Question 3:

What software do you use to create your magazine?

Question 4: 

How long do you allocate to complete a double page spread?

Question 5:

How many people do you usually have working on an article?

Unfortunately, they were unable to reply but I appreciate they are very busy. Instead, I found a tutorial on YouTube to clarify how Adobe InDesign operated as this is the software I will use to produce the magazine.